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Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 921, 10 July 1871, Page 2

We fancy that one of the first questions the General Assembly will ask itself when it comes seriously to consider the finances of the Colony will be whether the Californian Mail Service is worth the price paid for it. Hitherto the real merits of this question have been hidden by a fictitious halo. The Colony has flattered itself, and has been highly flattered by others, on its liberality in this matter. We have indulged in visions of "Anglo-Saxon Unity," of " National interchanges," and so on. We have been visited by large steamers sailing under the American flag ; we have had banquets and fe*tes in celebration of the circumstance, and we have had che satisfaction of getting our letters and papers a few days earlier (or not, as the case happened in Westland) than by the Suez route— and these constitute, so far as we can see, all the advantages that have been gained. As a set-off, we have the practical unavoidable payment to make of something like .£50,000 a year — to say nothing of the contingent circumstance that the competition of the American steamers on our own coasts has driven locally owned steamers out of the trade. Not a shilling of the subsidy comes back to us excepting the absolutely necessary expenditure of the Mail steamers in our ports. No advantage whatever has accrued to our trade, for American ports are hermetically closed by a protective tariff against our productions. California can send us nothing we could nni get as cheaply in the ordinary conrso of tilings— all we gain is the gratification of indulging in a luxury. The action of ii c Colony in the matter is 3ornctlii»^li!io that one sees sometimes in private life. There are men who will starve on a red herring a day and still sport kid gloves and smoke Havannah cigars.